Old LaHonda is back!

It was the "traditional" Thursday version of the Tuesday/Thursday morning ride today, featuring the run up through the park and, finally, we're back to the regular routine of doing the west-side Old LaHonda loop! It's been maybe 5 weeks that they've been working on the road, requiring us to substitute various dead-end-road loops off Skyline to fulfill our twice-weekly requirement of enough climbing to make it feel like you've done enough climbing.

It's not perfect; the new pavement is still sticky in sections, and there's a bit of gravel that's going to stick to your tires, but nothing to scare you away. It does leave you wondering why it took 5 weeks to pave so little though! Seriously, there aren't that many sections of new pavement. The word that comes to mind is "unimpressive." The best we can hope for is that the section where the road's been falling away may benefit from substantially-less erosion in the future.

So back to the ride, we had Eric, Todd, Karen, Kevin (not the pilot), Ludo & Marcus showed up for a morning just a bit nicer than most lately. Warmer (still leg warmers, but no base layer), zero fog, dry pavement and good company. I was hoping that, after my better-than-expected climbing on Tuesday, I might follow it up today with a strong ride up Kings, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. I did feel stronger as the ride went on though, and towards the end of the ride I was getting that wonderful feeling of wanting to just keep on going, like this would be a great day to kick off 100 miles and some really gnarly climbs!